as i am an honest puck

I like to think, and now I'm in interpretation/headcanon land, that while there are no actual romantic feelings, or least very little, I think it's Ilya who thought that maybe he would end up with Svetlana. Both Shane and Ilya are affected by compulsory heterosexuality, even though Ilya is bisexual. Ilya never thought he would end up in a committed relationship with a man. And this goes with my analysis that Ilya believed that life would simply "happen" to him. That there are rules to be followed and yes, Shane, we can get together and fuck, it's simple and doesn't mean anything, but in the end we will take on the yoke of the roles that are expected of us.

Having Svetlana there as a close friend with history is a departure from book-Ilya, who doesn't have a person like this in his life, and is overall more alone. But even with the support from Svetlana, show-Ilya has far less hope for the future than Shane by the time we get to Shane's injury in episode 5. He's packing and heading back to Russia, back to his family's expectations, maybe to mend fences with his brother and fall back into his old role—we can't say for sure. Obviously, we see that Ilya has a change of heart, and decides to take the risk to be with Shane, and to leave Russia for good so that he can live an open life eventually.

This leads me to season 2 and the adaptation of The Long Game. Ilya isolates himself in Ottawa, cut off from the transient friendships he made in Boston. He's also not as close with his current team as he thinks he should be. He specifically regrets losing touch with Svetlana, who in the books is an old flame/hook-up situation, but I don't think, with what we've seen of Svetlana and Ilya's relationship in the show, that it has to be much different than the books in season 2. If anything, it's more heartbreaking and shows the stark reality of Ilya's worsening depression. I can see missed calls on Ilya's phone from Svetlana, and unanswered texts. We see in the show that she knows Ilya is in love with a man, but we don't know for sure that she knows it's Shane. What if Ilya doesn't tell her?

And they were "rivals."

Chapters: 9/11 Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, inspired by Station Eleven (but you don’t need to read Station Eleven to understand it), implied secondary character death but no specific deaths are ever confirmed, absolutely zero zombies if that is a concern for you, high levels of pining, rated E because this one is a slow burn until it isn’t Summary:

The Boston Raiders are making decent time heading up into Michigan when one of the horses almost breaks an ankle on what’s left of the road.

A highly lethal—and highly contagious—virus has swept across the planet, taking down the power grid, toppling society, and leaving behind only a tiny fraction of the population. For a while, it seems like everything is over. This is not the case.

Shane isn't planning out every detail of his day ten years in the future. He isn't out here reading the instruction manual of his microwave, he isn't making excel spread sheets on every little detail or pouring over the settings on his washing machine. He hopes to still be playing hockey, he hopes to still be with Ilya. He will do everything he can to bring about that future. If it isn't about those two things, he's not really that bothered.

Shane is a jock who has spent his whole life building towards becoming the best NHL player in the league. He moved out of his parent's house as a teenager, after he secured an NHL salary. He has a team of people who organise his schedule. He has an interior designer. He has a stylist. He definitely has a cleaner, a trainer, a nutritionist. He gets his meal prepped meals delivered and only has to worry about heating them up.

--

"Yo! Who's fucking baby is this?!"

Ilya slowly blinks into consciousness. His head is pounding. He sits up, and realizes that he'd fallen asleep on the floor, with a woman's underwear stuck to his right cheek. Ilya peels it off, makes an interested face when he also realizes its sticky, and tries to survey the damage from last night. The first thought he has is this is not my hotel room.

Connors is already up, fully dressed and anxiously pacing back and forth. He seems to be distressed about something in the bathroom, shouting unintelligibly, English too panicked and incoherent for Ilya to make out what he's saying. Marleau is still facedown, also on the floor, completely naked. Ilya looks down. Miraculously, he has clothes on. They are not, however, the clothes he started the night in. He's 99% sure he's wearing a woman's crop top. And women's pajama shorts. He's also fairly sure they are bedazzled on the butt. "Guys! Wake the fuck up!" Connors shouts again. Ilya starts feeling his way around the floor for his clothes, phone, and wallet. His search gets him to peek up from the suite's coffee table, which brings into view a gorgeous exotic bird, almost as tall as the men in the room, voraciously eating something from Ilya's jeans, which hang suspended on the hotel's chandelier. To put it bluntly, the room is trashed. Furniture that isn't broken is overturned to its side. Strange stains that smell alcoholic in nature pervade the hotel floor. Women's thongs, bras, and other undergarments scatter themselves all across the room, with their owners nowhere in sight. Ilya walks up to the exotic bird. The bird stops his eating, turns a yellow, predatory eye in Ilya's direction. Ilya pets the bird once, twice, and then spots his phone hanging out of his back pocket, to his relief. Ilya fishes it out of the air, and finds a charger conveniently strewn to the side. He plugs his phone in. He leaves the bird so it can keep eating at his jeans. While he waits for his phone to power up, he walks over, nudges Marleau in the ribs. "Wake up," Ilya orders. Marly groans. Ilya nudges him again. "Captain's orders," he says, deadly serious.

Marly, on command, slowly comes to. "Jesus fuck, what happened last night?" Marly groans. He realizes he's not wearing any clothes, looks at Ilya, then shrugs. He then checks the ceiling, at the chandelier, and the bird stretching its long magnificent neck to feast on Ilya's designer jeans. "Yo, who's bird is that?" "We can worry about the bird later!" Connors shouts, flying back in from the bathroom. "We are three grown men with a fucking baby that isn't ours in our bathtub! We are going to get arrested if we don't identify who it is right now!"

Chapters: 6/11 Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, inspired by Station Eleven (but you don’t need to read Station Eleven to understand it), implied secondary character death but no specific deaths are ever confirmed, absolutely zero zombies if that is a concern for you, high levels of pining, rated E because this one is a slow burn until it isn't 

Summary:

The Boston Raiders are making decent time heading up into Michigan when one of the horses almost breaks an ankle on what’s left of the road.

A highly lethal—and highly contagious—virus has swept across the planet, taking down the power grid, toppling society, and leaving behind only a tiny fraction of the population. For a while, it seems like everything is over. This is not the case.

Or: The world ends. Shane Hollander starts playing for Boston. Yes, in that order.